Holy Arachnids!

I was out pulling some weeds today and looked up to see the biggest spider I've ever seen outside of the zoo. Its body is at least an inch long! I came in and "googled" for spiders and found Black-and-Yellow Garden Spider - Argiope aurantia which looks very much like it. For now I've decided that it is harmless and welcome to live in my garden. I hope that I'm right about that. If anyone out there is an arachnologist, or is otherwise spider-savvy, could you please let me know if this is something that I should be concerned about?

I know that most spiders are harmless and, if anything, it is probably beneficial to the garden. However, it is also HUGE and freaky and right next to my house. I can't decide whether I want to sit there and watch it or run screaming.

This one is in context - in a very large daylily

A closeup of the spider itself

(but still smaller than the actual spider!)

Pinned!

Normally there isn't any good mail on Saturday. Today, however, was an exception -- the December DTC pins that I ordered were waiting on the front porch when I came down from painting! The idea is to have these pins on our bags when we go to China to help find all our cyberpals from the DTC group.

The pins say 小 朋友 (Xiao Pengyou) which means, literally, "Little Friends". We selected that as the name for our group. Wendy, of Children's Book Club fame, worked with Rochelle at Celebrate Adoption to come up with the design and to produce the pins. They came out great - thank you so much Wendy and Rochelle for all your work on this. I am going to be sure to set one of our pins aside as a memento for Nora, they really are incredibly cute.

Finally - a place to put all those books!

Today we finished painting and installing the shelves Rob made for the niche in Nora's room. The paint is still drying and I have a bit of touch up to do on the wall, so they are sitting empty for now. But I said I'd update on Saturday and update I will!

We color-matched the paint on the trim, but chose an enamel for durability (probably needed if a wee one will be pulling her toys and books off them every day). I got satin which was the lowest sheen available in enamel and they still seem very shiny, especially in comparison to the very flat walls and trim. I hoping that I'm just sensitive to it because I've been looking at them so closely and that the difference will be less obvious once we get some of her stuff on the shelves.

Don't just sit there ... PAINT something!

For several months I've been admiring those pretty painted letters at places like Posh Tots and Pretty Personal Gifts, thinking about ordering, but never quite taking the plunge. Then the other day I went to JoAnn fabrics to get thread, and some plain wooden letters caught my eye. On a whim I decided to paint my own.

I wanted them to coordinate with the bug prints that I got a while back at Target. Remember the bug prints? That post is here. I'm no artist, but I think I got pretty close. I'm still trying to decide if I want to put bows on top of them like they do at Posh Tots. I like the look, but Rob won't let me put holes in the wall, so I'd have to figure out a way to hang them with Command adhesive and still have them look right.

While I've been making letters, Rob has been working on his own construction and painting project - shelves for Nora's room and our bathroom. We hope to have them finished and installed on Saturday, so stay tuned!

Happy Birthday Su Lin!

Su Lin, a panda cub at the San Diego Zoo, celebrated her first birthday today! Her name means "A little bit of something very cute" - how appropriate! Please support conservation efforts, it would be horrible to lose these gorgeous animals.

Even better than a free lunch!

They say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but there is, apparently, such a thing as FREE ROBEEZ!! Really. Look!! Somehow I signed up for USA Baby's eMom Rewards (which I think is just an email notification list) and wound up with a coupon for a free pair of Robeez in my email. Today I trekked over to USA Baby - which is sort of a long haul for me - and sure enough, free Robeez! They even had one of my two favorite styles (Red Wildflowers) in the size I wanted (12-18 months, because I want to be absolutely certain that Nora will get to wear them).

I'm off to get my Powerball ticket now, because I think this must be my lucky day!

Happy (Chinese) Valentine's Day!

Chinese Valentine’s Day is on the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month on the Chinese calendar, which falls on July 30 in North America this year (July 31 in China). Legend has it that the seventh daughter of the Emperor of Heaven, a weaving maid, fell in love and married a cowherd. They were so much in love that they forgot everything else in their lives and didn't complete their farming and weaving duties, which angered the Jade Emperor.

He exiled them to opposite banks of the Silver River (Milky Way), and only allows them to meet each other once a year on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month.

This legend has been handed down for nearly two millennia. The Chinese people believe that the star, Vega, east of the Milky Way, is Zhi Nu, and that Altair, on the western side of the Milky Way is Niu Lang waiting for his wife.

The seventh day of the seventh lunar month is the only Chinese festival devoted to love in the lunar calendar.

Mandarin DVDs!

It was another great mail day at our house! Nora continues to get more (and better) mail than we do! Today she received the Mandarin/English Bear in the Big Blue House DVDs I ordered from yesasia.

I heard about these from Denise in the December 2005 DTC group. We were talking about the lovely name Luna which led to Bear and his friend the Sun (Luna). Denise mentioned these terrific multilingual DVDs. I'm not a big fan of tv for kids, but this is a show I like and it's available in a version that will help Nora learn Mandarin. How great is that?!

As you can see from the photo above, I also ordered a CD of children's music. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm really curious to hear what kind of Chinese children's music has a little Dutch girl on the package. Hmm.

More stuff from Nora's closet

Early in the wait I participated in a couple of postcard swaps. I wanted Nora to know how many people were thinking of her even before we knew her, probably even before she was born. I think it will also be fun to learn about all the places that the postcards are from (a geography lesson in disguise!)

I found the album at Exposures and got 4x6 pages so that all sizes of postcards would fit. It's nice because you can see both the front and back of the cards and it's a little more substantial than the postcard albums. Neat, huh?

Children's Culture Connection

Ok, so I'm not exactly sure how I heard about this. I think it might have been from the FCC-Midwest newsletter. In any case, there is a really great organization called Children's Culture Connection that is dedicated to helping children gain an appreciation for other cultures. They've just started a series of stories about the world travels of four internationally adopted sisters

The current (and I *think* first) episode is called The Adventures of Ming Yao in Destination: Hong Kong. Here's the description from the site:

Meet Ming Yao-- adopted from China as a toddler, she’s now an all-American teenager who never shies away from an adventure in her native land. Fearless, fun and very fashionable, this plucky heroine charms people wherever she goes. In this episode she accompanies her mom to Hong Kong--where East meets West in a high energy city filled with color & contrast. Whether she’s on a shopping spree in a designer boutique, practicing tai chi in the park, or joining in on a back-alley mahjong game, Ming Yao blazes her own trail, taking young readers off the beaten path to explore the real Hong Kong ---on an adventure they will never forget!

Our copy just came in the mail today and, although it will be a while before Nora is old enough to read it, I'm really happy to have it. The book is written diary style and is printed in a font that resembles a young girl's handwriting. It reads very much like a travel journal, including pictures, sketches and swatches of fabric.

Ordering information is available on their site at Children's Cultural Connection. You can also sign up to receive notification of future events.

An extra plus is that half of the US $15 purchase price is donated to charity! I chose to have mine donated to Half the Sky Foundation. This organization will be familiar to those of you who received our Christmas card last year or who have seen the poster in my office. They do great work, please consider them when you plan your giving!

Kudos to Heather Wilson (and boo hiss to my guy)!

Representative Heather Wilson from New Mexico has introduced legislation to extend the I-171H. You can read the press release here. It's great news, but it annoys me to read that this was in response to a letter received from a family in her district. I wrote to both our senators and our district's representative - all of whom I voted for, by the way - and NONE of them responded to me in any way. No phone call, no letter, no email and certainly no proposed legislation. You can be sure that I will be contacting them again and watching with interest as this comes up for discussion/vote.

Letter from the USCIS

Interestingly, although I have not yet received a response to the letter I sent to the USCIS, I did receive a response to the letter I sent to the White House and they forwarded to the USCIS.

This is another form letter response and has what looks like a rubber-stamp signature from Constance Carter who is apparently someone in the USCIS customer service department.

While is it a response, it doesn't say much and offers little encouragement. Basically a canned remark about protecting the best interest of the child. It's hard to argue with protecting the children, except to say that I don't see how re-filing the I-171H does that. If our family circumstances changed since our LID, we would need to get a homestudy update from our social worker anyway. We also have to be re-fingerprinted after 15 months. As far as I can tell the only "extra" added by re-filing the I-171H is needing to pay an additional processing fee.

Book Junkie

I think that I mentioned the December DTC group's children's book club once before. We are now on week 9. I'm a little behind... and buying out of order. I like to shop at Borders and our little downtown bookstore (mostly) because I like having them there and don't want Amazon to put them out of business. I do order board books from Amazon, though, because they have a buy 3 get the 4th free deal that includes most board books.

This afternoon we were wanting to go out for a bit, so I suggested a trip to (insert maniacal laugh here) Borders. Rob can always be convinced to go to Borders because he can get an espresso drink and a fancy pastry and read magazines for free. I think that's allowed, by the way, because they charge a fortune for coffee and put the magazines right next to the coffee bar. Besides, while Rob is reading their magazines, I'm off shopping!

Anyway, my intention today was to buy week one's book, The Kissing Hand. No, I'm not that far behind, like I said I'm out of order!

So, what I went in for was this:

What I came away with was this:

Of course I opened the Chinese music cd immediately and played it the whole way home (5 songs worth). Rob was not pleased, he doesn't like Chinese music and wanted to listen to NPR. I am pleased to say, though, that he does like Diary of a Wombat. I don't know if a child would like it or not, but we thought it was laugh-out-loud funny.

Jan DTC Secret Pal Gift - July

Continuing the great-mail Monday, we also received a package from our January DTC Secret Pal! It was all kinds of travel meal-time stuff -- sippy cups, bowls with lids, baby utensils -- a set of interlocking rings and a bunny wrist rattle.

The timing was sort of amazing, because just yesterday I stopped in BRU (Babies R Us) - my first visit ever - and of all the thousands of things in the store I was somehow drawn to the travel bowls. I sure hope Nora likes Cheerios, because every image I have of her eating involved Cheerios! Cheerios in a travel bowl, Cheerios falling into her bib pouch...

July Bib from Karen!

Mondays are becoming a really good mail day at our house! Today we received two nice bibs from Karen. One is a pretty pink fruit motif bib and the other is a very practical vinyl-coated bears-of-the-world bib with a cheerio-catcher.

Thank you Karen!

A Milestone!!

I just finished the previous post and and happened to notice our LID ticker (at the very bottom of the page, scroll all the way down). Today is our 6 month LID anniversary! If the current 12 month wait holds, we are half way there!

Some thoughts on surviving the wait

I think that the worst part about the wait is the lack of control. I felt this to some degree while waiting for our home study and then while waiting for the I-171H, but this is much worse. Probably because the wait is so much longer and real information is so scarce.

Wait time rumors abound, but we're trying hard not to get too caught up in that. I admit to checking the Rumor Queen at least once a day and to stalking CCAI's website waiting for the monthly newsletter (expected tomorrow!), but I also try to tell myself that the process takes however long it takes and in the end we will be matched with the child that we were meant to have.

It also helps to stay really busy. In addition to our Mandarin Chinese language classes, I am taking a sewing class and Rob is taking Aikido. We've connected with a couple of local Chinese adoption groups as well. This afternoon we went to a local FCC new members gathering and I am thinking of volunteering for some FCC committee work. It just doesn't feel right to participate in activities without putting something back in. I also feel strongly about being able to provide Nora with positive interactions with other Chinese people, both adopted and not. Anything that helps establish those connections is a good thing.

Letter from the President (well, sort of)

Back on June 6 I wrote a post about the need for a policy change regarding the I-171H. Well, I actually did write letters to our Representative, our Congressmen, the President and the USCIS. Today I received the first response -- from the White House. It was sort of a non-response, actually, the letter says:

On behalf of President George W. Bush, thank you for your letter.

The White House is sending your inquiry to the Department of Homeland Security. This agency has the expertise to address your concerns. They will respond directly to you, as promptly as possible.

The President sends his best wishes.

It was machine-signed as Darren K. Hipp, Acting Director of Presidential Correspondence.

At least I guess it's good to know that they opened my letter and read enough of it to direct it to the appropriate agency (the USCIS is housed under the Department of Homeland Security). I wonder if someone reads mail coming to the White House or if they use some sort of text-recognition software to respond and re-direct.

Ouch!

I'm not sure how I survived our previous trip to China without a zillion vaccinations, but I sure am making up for it this time! The CDC recommends that travelers to China be vaccinated for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, typhoid and tetanus. Depending on the region to which you are traveling, you might also need malaria (this one I think is an oral medication, not a vaccine) and rabies. I have a current tetanus vaccine, so I escaped that one, but made up for it by needing a MMR booster since my first dose was before 12 months of age.

The hepatitis A&B are combined in one series of three vaccinations. I had my first one about a month ago and the second one yesterday (#3 will be in about 5 months). Last night my arm was doing ok, but this afternoon it HURTS. Rob, the stinker, has already had hepatitis vaccinations at work so he only needed a MMR booster. We'll both go in for the typhoid shot closer to our travel date.

Because the hepatitis series takes 6 months to complete, you really need to plan in advance of travel. The requirements and recommendations for a variety of destinations can be found on the CDC's website.

What's Black and White...

and eats 42 lbs of bamboo per day?

Rob and I stopped at the healthy market on our way home from dinner tonight to pick up a treat (aka ginger soda) for this evening. There were a couple of people in front of us in line, so of course I looked at the magazines and this month's National Geographic caught my eye. How could it not with a cover like this??

The feature was timed for the National Zoo's panda cub Tai Shan's first birthday on July 9. Check it out if you have the time, it's very interesting and the pictures of Tai Shan are unbelievably cute. You can also see more of Tai Shan on the National Zoo's website. They even have a panda-cam!